I’m Done Being An Aspiring Writer

When I was twelve, I got a quarter of the way through attempting to write my first novel. It was called Magic on a Saturday Afternoon, and I believed it would make me the youngest published writer to have ever lived. After careful revision and many months’ work, I let my best friend read the draft, and she promptly said, “I think some people are born writers, and you’re just not one of them.”

Not long ago, my father told me the same thing. “What have you published?” he said. “Writing is a God-given talent, and you will never be among the Greats.”

It seemed, in that moment, as though nothing had changed in ten years. I had no books to my name, no news networks seeking interviews, and next to no money to live off. On my best days, I told myself that people don’t publish books at 22 with no connections. On my worst days, I wish that I had become a vet.

I want to say I love writing with all my heart, but that isn’t exactly true. It’s painstaking work and often unrewarding. Some mornings, I will lie in bed typing for hours and delete the document by noon. Other times, I will spend weeks polishing a well-thought-out, beautifully written feature only to share it and receive no response.

Writing isn’t entirely something I love doing. It’s something I have to do. For better or for worse, it is how I process the world, how I best communicate, and how I keep myself sane. I’m incapable of functioning if I don’t make space for it — and I need a fair bit of space. It has never been something I whip up when inspiration strikes (perhaps that is the God-given talent I will never know). With my craft, I have had to work at it constantly, pushing through mounds of garbage prose and writer’s block to get to the gold.

The worst part about pursuing this kind of work is that my success depends on what other people think. Of course, I can tell myself that I write for me first and foremost; that’s certainly true, but that won’t pay my bills, and finding other work to pay the bills cuts into my creative time and space. I have to promote, ask friends to like my Facebook posts, hold my breath and step away from the computer each time I share something new. It’s emotionally exhausting, and I’d like to take this moment to congratulate every single artist who has ever dared to share their work. It is one of the bravest things you can do.

Last year, when I made a commitment to pursue writing as a full-time career, I applied to an MA in Creative Writing to give some structure to my goals. It was my only plan, and I didn’t get in.

Before the rejection letter arrived, I’d considered that as a possibility and worried about how it would affect my confidence going forward. Though it was certainly a blow to my plans, I was shocked to find that not for one second did I feel like giving up writing, and the reason for that is simple: I’m not capable of it. I will be a writer as long as I live, whether I am published or poor or the next J.K. Rowling. I am not aspiring to write. I have been writing stories since I was 7 years old, and as a writing professor once told me, “the only thing that defines a writer is writing.”